THANK YOU for your support in our inaugural season at Flipside Farm CSA!

We’ve come a long way since our very very first Week 1 distribution back at the end of May! Wow, remember the first crops of Spring? We had incredible early kale, lettuce, cabbage, zucchini, bok choy, onions, kohlrabi….and perhaps some of the sweetest snap peas I’ve ever experienced! And though we had a tough time with drought conditions in June, we pulled our produce through the hot weather to bring you a bountiful summer harvest loaded with tomatoes, peppers, okra, Swiss chard, spaghetti squash and melons. Then the rains came almost daily in late July, and then again in August, to help us get our fall crops established in the ground. Oooh la la, and what a payoff we had with our delicious fall carrots, loads of potatoes and root veggies, and a wide array of crunchy greens from escarole to tat soi to arugula.

Of course, we didn’t have a perfect year, but that’s to be expected with organic farming. You may notice that there were a few crops we couldn’t grow so well (cauliflower succumbed to the harlequin beetles, spinach was plagued all season with fungal issues, and fall cabbage got burned by cabbage worms & the October heat), but we did have plenty of crops to step in to fill the gap! In fact some of best crops of the year included our fresh onions, shallots, slicing tomatoes, sweet peppers, and blue-gold potatoes. (Am I allowed to say flowers too? YES) Our vast crop diversity is our CSA’s insurance policy. I hope too that you’ve tried some veggies you may have never seen before – maybe you even have a new favorite now. Regardless I hope you’ve had a truly healthy and delicious season filled with our fresh, locally-grown, chemical-free veggies.

Though the season may be over for now, it doesn’t stop here! We’ve already begun the planning for next year, and the winter to-do list is already a mile long. But we do indeed have some exciting plans for next year. For starters, we’re doubling our production fields to grow more food on more acres – AND we’re going to grow some new varieties that we didn’t even attempt this year (I’ll save the dirty details for next season). We’re also hiring more staff to come on board, and improving our online marketing & retail system to make more locally-sourced products easy for you to access. Next year we hope to offer more events & workshops here at the farm to keep you connected. Lastly, we need your help to fill out our year-end survey to give us feedback on your experience with this year’s CSA. We are always adjusting the plan to make sure we bring you the most delicious and balanced CSA share each week. Oh and did I mention? We’ve just begun the paperwork to transition our farm to USDA Certified Organic. We have an exciting future ahead!

All of this is made possible truly because of you. The CSA model has succeeded over the past 30 years because of your faith in local agriculture. Your support, trust, and involvement in our veggie CSA gets me out of bed every early morning and inspires me to work hard to build a productive, chemical-free, beautiful, sustainable farm that I can share with you. I hope you’ll join us again for the upcoming 2017 farm season!! We’ll kick off the season next year around Memorial Day for another 22 weeks of veggie greatness.

That’s all for now folks! Stay tuned later this winter for our final 2016 newsletter. You can always check out our progress via our website, or Facebook & Instagram @Flipside Farm CSA. We hope to have you back again for our 2017 season. It’s been a true honor to grow the healthiest food on the planet for you and your family. See you again soon.